STRATEGIC PLANNING & MARKETING

Search Engine Optimization and Submission

The most important task in internet marketing is search engine optimization and submission. There are some quality directories and search engines where you can submit your website. By submitting your website to the quality directories, search engines will be able to find your website.

Be careful to avoid services that promise to submit your website to 75,000 search engines. They often submit your website in such a manner that may result in your website getting permanently banned from search engines. Only do business with services that submit your website to quality web directories and major search engines.

A.B. Productions, Inc. uses manual submission which is the preferred method by many of the large search engines such as Google. Although there are third party programs and webmasters that will submit your website automatically. Keep in mind that Google, Yahoo, MSN and many other search engines can tell how your site was submitted and it ultimately can impact your ranking with those engines that place more weight on manual submissions.

Optimization

Optimizing your website for search engines is a very important step. To optimize you need to focus on keyword density positioning for the phrases and words for which you want to rank highly. To help the search engines interpret your pages you should also use good Meta tags.

You can optimize your website yourself if you have a lot of time to spare or search for an optimization consultant. Stay away from those experts charging $1,000 a month or more. They only have one goal and that is to get as much out of you as possible before you figure out they are not helping you. Stay with SEO consultants who charge a fee more reasonable.

A.B. Productions, Inc. offers optimization services at an attractive price. Designed to leave you asking what you should do with the extra cash you will save by using our company.

Link Popularity

Your website's popularity is even more important than SEO. Link popularity is determined by the number of links that are pointed at your website. The more inbound links to your website, the better your website will rank in the search engines.

Of course there are a number of ways that you can increase your inbound links. You can do link exchanges to get reciprocal links between your site and another, you can submit your site to free web directories, write articles or press releases and submit to article directories.

Like with every other area of website planning and marketing. There always seems to be something that makes an easy process on paper end up to be more work then not, thanks to people who try to work the system for personal gain. There are many do's and don'ts with link building that if done incorrectly could leave your site banned from the search engines. A.B. Productions, Inc. can assist you in avoiding these penalties and establish effective link popularity.

Things to avoid that can damage your reputation in the eyes of search engines. No link farms, suspicious looking website's or poor quality link exchanges. Forget the reciprocal links – they no longer have any significant weight. Do not participate in three-way or similar linking schemes – these attempts to disguise reciprocal linking are easy to detect. NASA managed to get a man on the Moon with computers less powerful than a GameBoy, so why do you think Google can’t discover link triangles with all the computing resources at its disposal?

Buying links. This practice is pretty much discouraged by Google, because it undermines the idea of the proxy for human judgment. This means you have to be especially savvy when buying links. Avoid link trading sites or any site publicly announcing that is sells links. Don’t mix buying links with paid advertising. You pay for an advertisement on a high traffic page expecting visitors referred by your ad. Buying links has a different purpose – increasing your link popularity.

Do not be obsessed with backlinks. There is an intense focus on link building but not enough focus on content creation. Links must reflect the quality of content. If you think your site has not enough incoming links, you should concentrate on how to improve the quality of content and make it more appealing, not on more link exchanges.

Link penalties. Too many links from certain flagged sites or ones that have no relation to the content category your website is listed under can bring an unwanted attention of search engine quality teams. They can ban your site if they find you responsible for boosting your rankings which could result in a significant loss of potential customer base.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Because it is a relatively recent phenomenon, many online business owners do not understand the meaning of the term “pay-per-click advertising,” nor do they realize its enormous potential for increasing their online presence and bringing more traffic to their website's. Even those who understand basic search engine marketing techniques sometimes fail to make the distinction between pay-per-click (hereafter, PPC) ad campaigns and organic search engine optimization.

Pay-per-click (PPC) search engines are those that offer the marketing option called "pay-per-click" to users. PPC advertising is the placement of a small ad on the search results page for a specific keyword or keywords in return for a specified payment when a visitor actually clicks on the ad. Advertisers pay nothing to appear on the results page per se; they only pay the amount they have agreed to (or bid for) when someone actually clicks on their ad and is taken to the landing page on their website. The term "pay per click" means just what it says: the advertiser pays each time a visitor clicks on the ad.

The most popular PPC search engine is Google; their PPC advertising program is called AdWords. The next most popular search engines are Yahoo!, MSN Live, and Ask. A large number of other search engines offering PPC advertising opportunities are available - ranging from metasearch engines that incorporate traffic from numerous other engines and online sources all the way to small, niche search engines that specialize in one or more categories or topics of interest.

Key Tips to Keep in Mind While Running a Pay-Per-Click Campaign

There is sometimes fierce competition for specific keyword(s) on a given PPC search engine. Most PPC search engines automate the bidding process for you (stopping, of course, when they reach the maximum bid you have indicated), but personal involvement and the judicious use of third-party tools by the user is advisable to ensure that the tracking mechanisms built into the search engine's control panel are in sync with what is actually happening.

Up until quite recently, the general rule was that the business that bid the highest amount of money for a specific keyword would be ranked first in the PPC results, the second-highest bidder would be ranked second, etc. Over the last six months or so, an element called "quality score" has become the determining factor in Google AdWords listings, and has just been introduced into Yahoo! listings and there are indications it will also become a factor for MSN. Typically, PPC search engines limit the number of PPC ads on a results page to less than 10, and research has shown that unless you are in the first 3 or 4 of the PPC ads, you are much less likely to be investigated by visitors.

Because the competition is so fierce, most PPC search engines do not require a minimum amount of money be invested in a campaign - in fact, some will even give you a nominal amount of money to begin your campaign with. Some may require a deposit of a small amount (in the neighborhood of $25 to $50), but this money is then applied to your account.

Be prepared to spend a fair amount of time monitoring your campaign, especially in the beginning.

Is a Pay-Per-Click Campaign the Right Investment for my Business?

With more and more consumers looking online for information on purchases and making more purchases online than ever before, and recent studies indicating that searches still rarely go beyond the first three pages of organic search results (an example being the iProspect Search Engine User Behavior Study of April 2006), engaging the user early on takes on even more importance. The highly relevant PPC ads results on the first search engine results pages (SERPs) can be a prime source for conversions and sales.

PPC ad programs are evolving and becoming easier for first-time advertisers online to understand and use. The programs are flexible, can handle anything from one keyword to thousands of keywords, offer a dazzling array of bells and whistles, and come packaged with analytics and reporting options that range from the simple to the complex.

The apparent simplicity can be deceiving. You can set up a PPC on a search engine with only a few steps and get results that will satisfy you, but if you want to milk all that you can from the PPC method of advertising, you need to be prepared to take advantage of every option and every advantage available to you. You need to investigate the details of the programs you are taking part in, keep an eagle eye on your bids and the performance of your ads, and spend time keeping up with the latest changes in the search engines to ensure your money is placed where it will do the most good. It takes time and effort.

Keep in mind that many companies claim to have experience in online marketing struggle with the intricacies of the techniques needed to judge which PPC search engine to use and how best to play the bidding game. A.B. Productions, Inc.has the knowledge and expertise needed to run an effective PPC campaign.

And so we come to the bottom line - PPC sounds like a great option, but what does it really cost and is it worth it for my specific business? Each campaign is different, depending upon the bid amounts, number of actual click-throughs and the Return on Investment (ROI) generated.

Affiliate Programs

Another good way to promote your website if you are selling a product on it is with an affiliate program. An affiliate program will reward others for promoting your website by giving them a percentage of any sales they generate for you. They may place banner ads on their site using an affiliate code in order to generate an affiliate sale and earn a commission. To get this done you will need a programmer with experience in affiliate programs.

Many internet companies can have thousands of affiliates generating sales or even get all their business in this manner. It costs you nothing up front, all you need to do is recruit affiliates by submitting the program to directories or website's that list affiliate programs. Places like forums, message boards or other places that are visited by webmasters that may be looking for extra revenue.

Understand that most website's are not overnight sensations. Building traffic and success take time and effort put into consistent online marketing. Please consider having us help with your projects. We offer free quotes for website design, SEO design, PPC, link campaigns and complete website optimization, so you have nothing to lose! Please contact us for a comprehensive price quote for your strategic planning & marketing project.